How I Spent My Avios in 2022 - And I Spent 360,000 of them!
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- Опубліковано 21 лип 2024
- Last week I talked about how I earned over 300,000 avios in 2022. In this video I show how I spent those avios in 2023... Indeed I spent more than I earned in the year...
And as I talk about those redemptions, I'll also talk about 6 ways you can increase the value you get from your redemptions.
HFP article on SeatSpy and some seat shenanigans...
www.headforpoints.com/2021/08...
Eagle-eyed viewers may have noted some oddities about my redemption from DUB-LHR-BOS. The fees I paid at the time were lower than prevail currently, so the numbers I show in screen are those prevailing now, which are not the same as the numbers I describe in the video - I even confused myself when I was recording... And the quoted price of the redemption was 83,000 which included a club seat from Dublin to London. However, I was involuntarily downgraded on that leg to economy so BA adjusted the number of avios taken to 77.250 to reflect the avios cost of the leg actually flown. Non eagle-eyed viewers won't care...
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⏰ Timestamps:
0:00 - Intro
1.22 - A Couple of General Points
4:06 - 1: How To Value a Redemption
5:21 - 2: Taxes and Fees
6:56 - 3: Redeeming as an Ex-EU
9:35 - 4: One-Way Redemptions
10:16 - 5: Finding OneWorld Seats
11:40 - 6: Finding BA Seats
12:26 - The value I got....
DISCLAIMER: Links included in this description might be affiliate links. If you purchase a product or service with the links that I provide I may receive a small commission. There is no additional charge to you. This video may not be copied or reproduced without written permission.
Hi Matt, in relation to a video you made a while ago regarding cabin crew recognising Gold members on board and upgrade algorithms, I fly regularly domestically and have been Gold status since May 2021. At the start of December when I checked in online, I was upgraded to CE for the first time ever. It turned out ET was fully booked so I think I was upgraded so that another passenger could book my economy seat. Then on Hogmanay, I sat in ET and the Cabin manager approached me inviting me to sit in CE, again that’s the first time I have experienced this, I was also given a bottle of Champagne when disembarking and wished a Happy New Year. A nice touch 👍
That's good to hear - thanks for sharing. Hearing more of this sort of thing which can only be encouraging... Although I did hear a story of a purser congratulating someone on 5 years of gold and ignoring the person next to her who had just completed 25 years of GGL... But any recognition is a step in the right direction!
As always very intresting, thanks for always explaining it clearly.
Thanks Andy
Really glad I’ve found your channel Matt. Really informative, to help me in my current quest to fly business with my wife somewhere long haul! Keep up the good work 👍. Thank you
I'll keep making them if you keep watching them!
Thanks Matt
You really got great value with your hard work znd research. With so many Avios, and I don't know that program at all, jou should look at that long weekend to Cape Town😊🇿🇦
Thanks Peet- the weekly vote for South Africa!!! BA's redemptions to Cape Town are hard to find and even Qatar isn't brilliant as its such a popular destination. On account of its loveliness, no doubt!
@@MattsPlanet Might be wirth your while to look for redemption to Jhb. BA has 2 or 3 flights a day, one on the A380. Then connect to CT. Even full price return JHB to CTP should be under 200 quid😊🇿🇦👍
An absolute star in the making, Matt you are absolutely brilliant ... when you are touring Gulfstreams and trialling new First cabins, please don't forget us! I fly Bermuda to London economy return at least once or twice a month - soon to be moved to LHR T3 - took you up on your Amex Premier Plus recommendation recently (70,000 welcome Avioseisesi thank you very much!). Tempted by an inaugural Tier Point run later this year (TP expiry June) to try and move me from Silver to Gold. Questioning whether the efforts (time mainly) and cost are really worth the First lounge and check in. Always happy to recommend topics I'd love covered which may help when the creative juices run a little dry. All the very best - really enjoy your content. Thank you for all that you do and keep slogging away at it - you are very much a superstar in the making. Passionate, knowledgeable and of course the sprinkling of jokes help Reward Saver explanations!
Oh you flatterer you... You are welcome to comment again!
leviosaaaaaaaaa..wow didnt know about the devalue of points.. def gonna plan ahead abit more now.
It may not happen any time soon, but be prepared is the key!
I hurt my knee on the West Highland Way last May and had to get a flight back from Glasgow to London City unexpectedly, so I could get home to Canterbury earlier than planned to rest and recover.
There were no economy seats available on any plane for the next day but there was some Business availability on several flights.
It was more than £250 cash for all the tickets I saw (didn't take an exact note as was in pain and on pain killers, but I had messaged that to my wife) but I managed to get a BA flight for 8500 Avios + £25 and it was seat 1A.
There's value in them there hills.... I hope you get the reference!
In reference to your Boston redemption in First, you could have saved some Avios by starting the journey in either Inverness or Jersey as neither of these airports attract APD so you would have paid 68,000 Avios plus £212.31
You make a good point - I had it in mind that BA adds a chunk of avios for that inbound connection - they used to be free but now they are chargeable... Yet when I just tested it from INV and JER the avios didn't go up when adding that leg... I got £346 in taxes from Jersey and £361 from Inverness but the principal you mention does appear to work
@@MattsPlanet it seems that the Carrier Imposed Surcharge (they’re not allowed to call it a fuel surcharge anymore) is a whopping £275 on a journey from JER or INV to BOS. On a booking I made in First (one way) Jersey to Singapore a few months ago the taxes and surcharges came to £168.51 plus 119,000 Avios and a companion voucher saving over £200 each in taxes which more than covers the £40 ticket down to Jersey.
Well done on your brilliant context by the way. I’m making my way through all your videos one by one.
I must be an oddball as I think of my Avios as a freebie that I generate by shopping in the places I usually shop, paying by card as I usually do generates even more on top of my points exchange from reward cards etc or flights I’ve taken. My avios this year has paid the deposits on my 4 upcoming holidays without parting with a penny, securing premium cabins at exceptional prices. 2x first class returns to abq for under 4k, only £120 more than business! One of these rare BA anomalies. So anything I get for my avios in my view is a bonus.
That's a very sensible mindset... Not sure there's superb value in using them to pay deposits, but if you're thinking about them like you do I'm not sure that really matters!!!
Hi @matt, awesome video as usual, good info shared - thankyou.
What do you think is the best way to find dates and destinations to use the amex premium companipn vouchers?
The BA website tool for this
keeps crashing, so I called BA’s Gold Status line (of which i’m Gd member) only to be told I can only ask them to do 3 searches.
I’m struggling to find availability to use my companion vouchers - so any suggestions you can give, will be welcomed, thankyou
Hi there - Seatspy.com is probably the best place to go... They take a feed of seat availability directly from BA and share it in a much more user friendly way than BA can... They cover BA and a number of other airlines and have some interesting features like "where can I go on these dates". If you have some idea, aa.com has probably the best search capability amongst the airlines. That should give you some hope!
Matt. Is there any value in booking BA metal via partner airlines to reduce fees and/or points? Also how do you combine separate legs of an award booking into one reservation? Is this a phone call to BA?
Hi there - ex-London I don't believe it makes a difference as the fees are equalised... You'd have the option of booking through Iberia and Qatar... I did see on HeadforPoints that you can save £50 on an Aer Lingus redemption if you book via avios.com rather than through aer Lingus.... I've not investigated thoroughly but its the sort of thing where I feel that if there was a significant opportunity to save money, it would be well known.... Q2 is call BA. Good questions!
Forced to use a voucher in short haul to Lanzarote as the vouchers are pulling up. Much against my better judgement as I always say and use them for USA Business or First.
Used your maths and glad to say we still got 2.49p per avios so feel a bit happier, off to work out what my F saving to Washington was…
Edit it was 2.76p and my First class to Washington was 4p
What’s your record ?
I think that 7p Boston trip will be tough to beat. Although its a bit artificial as there's no way I'd ever pay so much for a flight... In some ways I'm happier about the economy redemptions giving me 1.5p+ as I know those avios cost me less and I know I'd have to stump up the published fare if a redemption seat wasn't there...
Hi Matt, I was looking for 2 tickets to cmb from lhr with Qatar - Avios + cash deal (50%). It requires 65,000 points each way!! I have only 110,000 points. Should I buy Avios points or pay extra to the tickets ? Which one is the most cost effective option? Plz advise. 🙏🏽
Hello - looks like you need 20,000 points? Its quite simple to calculate the various ways of bridging the gap and just pick the one that's cheapest... I don't know how Qatar scales up and down its fares to substitute avios... BA will charge £335 for a lump sum of 20,000 avios so 1.7p per avios... You can subscribe for 20,000 avios and that will cost "only" £185 but they'll only arrive over the course of a year which may not be quick enough...
The issue we have is that even when making 9 return trips a year I struggle to keep Silver as when using redemptions you don’t earn avios. It’s very chicken and egg
Do you mean you don’t earn teir points on redemption flights ? As Avios don’t get you silver status…
@Ian Tracey
As far as I know, you get nothing from a reward seat.
I know I'm getting nothing from a reward flight to tokyo later in the year.
That is true... Welcome to the world of tier point runs, as covered in today's Sunday Times! But seriously, if you're redeeming points and not earning them from flying then you're in a status trap that's hard to get out of without doing something structured like a TP run. If you're travelling in a premium cabin mostly when redeeming it perhaps doesn't make sense, but being able to pick seats is nice...
Virgin actually gives tier points on a redemption which may inspire BA to rethink it but my breath is not held...
@@MattsPlanet ahh, thanks. I mostly fly Europe in economy, and I work to keep silver so that I can chose the emergency row when I book. I have one long haul flight a year that in biz class normally gets me past the line.
Would be nice to use the BA companion voucher on Qatar. Why this still isn't possible is a little odd, being that Qatar owns a large portion of BA.
I'm starting to lose faith in the BA card and it's stingy tweeks making it that little bit more expensive for the card holders especially when your paying £250 annually
I was pleasantly surprised when Iberia and Aer Lingus got added and it wouldn't shock me if Qatar did allow them, although the economics for Qatar would be quite different as so many people would be booking!
What do you consider to be a large Avios balance?
That's a really great question... I'd say more than one "regular" trip's worth... So for me I'd always like to be able to get to Australia and back which is 180,000 avios on Qatar these days... If there's two of you then "regular" for them would be 360,000 (which is quite a lot!). If "regular" is a twofer redemption to NYC then that would now be 160,000 avios... So I'd try not to go to far over 200,000 and certainly keep it under 300,000. As BA has just launched this subscription service I think the odds of an imminent major devaluation are slim - it would play really badly for BA to sell avios then rapidly make them x% less valuable - but I think the principal of controlling balances still stands!
I've always treated my Avios as if they have zero value. Only way to keep sane
As I say, that's one approach but perhaps not if you were paying £150 a month through the new subscription service to get them!!! They'd feel like they had a value then!
@@MattsPlanet Exactly. I only really buy avios when they are on sale, and even then it's to meet a goal.
A bit like you, in 2022, I earned 6 figures of points. I didn't do anything overly fancy and didn't really need to optimise anything (heavy estore use, which has the shops I was using anyway, got me to where I needed to be).
Not gonna complain about 2x return free business class tickets to SFO (sans non-airline taxes)
Your camera seems to be focused on your bookcase, not your face, better to have focus on face with limited depth sharpness to make background slightly blurry ( bokeh) set the focus with something in your exact position before starting and look at the diaphragm settings on the camera and thereby the exposure time
Thanks Rom - first time with the new camera and it went quite well! Certainly areas for improvement...
@@MattsPlanet in addition to Bokeh, try adding some saturation before publishing, good luck and thanks for all your info!
Can I use my avios to shop?
You can although its rarely good value to spend them that way...
Hi Matt, thank you for writing me back. Should you please tell me how it works for shopping because I have been trying to do so but it won’t let me. A response from you will so appreciated. Thank you once again for wri
I feel you probably don’t get acknowledged on flights due to your gold card status because they know how you achieved the tier points
If you regularly flew say London to New York in business class then they probably would acknowledge you
In their eyes you are a cheap charlie flying customer and not one of their high flying customers
Matt I could be wrong but that’s my take on the situation
I think you're on to something.... I'm scripting a video where I'll talk about CIV scores which is BA's internal ranking system and although I'm gold, I probably have a poor CIV score as I do indeed err towards the "Cheap Charlie" end of the scale! Would still be nice if it happened occasionally though!
The title says 2023 not 2022!😂
Fixed! Thanks
@@MattsPlanet Thanks for replying as well as correcting. Just wanted to say I really love your videos. Just discovered recently and am currently working my way through. Particularly your use of thesaurus’s (Aviorum?!). Great work and really funny 😊